Mechanical characterization of the elastoplastic orthotropic response of asphalt felt paper: experiments, modelling and numerical simulation

Abstract

A numerical and experimental analysis of the mechanical response of asphalt felt paper is presented. Thismaterial is widely used as a moisture barrier in buildings made of light materials. To ensure such function,it is necessary for this material not to be torn during its installation and operation and, for this reason, it isimportant to know its mechanical behavior in detail. To that end, tensile and bulge tests were carried outand respectively used to characterize the in-plane and out-of-plane rate-independent elastoplastic materialresponses which were observed to be strongly dependent on the directions of the cellulose fibers.The constitutive model considers the anisotropic character of the material assuming the Hill-48 functionto define both the yield surface and the non-associated plastic flow rule to properly predict the mechanicalbehavior for the full deformation ranges of both tests. The procedure to fit the material parametersis carried out via a proposed iterative numerical-experimental methodology. The obtainedresults are found to adequately describe the material response in both the tensile and bulge tests.